[8865] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: JURIS - DOJ rejects TAP FOIA Request (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Craig Partridge)
Wed Dec 8 16:58:14 1993
To: "J. Timothy Sprehe" <p00269@psilink.com>
Cc: James Love <love@essential.org>
Cc: com-priv <com-priv@psi.com>
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 93 16:52:07 -0500
From: Craig Partridge <craig@bbn.com>
> Am I the only taxpayer who thinks that federal agencies should stick to
> carrying out the functions for which they were created? that Justice has
> no business providing CALR services to the public? and that the demise
> of JURIS is a good thing for the taxpayer?
It seems to me that this perspective misses a key point.
The FOIA came about to allow people relatively open access to the
Government's work. One can argue that this openness is "a good thing" for
a number of reasons such as being a relatively low cost way to ensure openness
and bring about easier access to work that taxpayer money has funded.
As I read TAP's postings, their concern is that if one believes in the goals
of the FOIA, then the Dept of Justice is suggesting a loophole that is
undesirable -- namely that if the Govt purchases a data service from a
private company, Govt-related work stored in that data service may not be
subject to the FOIA. Imagine this extreme case: the White House hires a
private contractor to run its fileservers, and grants said contractor rights
in the stored data. Voila, White House documents are not subject to FOIA.
Do we, as taxpayers interested in open Government, want to permit this?
[Note, I'm not arguing about whether the FOIA request should be granted.
I'm focussing solely on the reasons DOJ gave for rejection.]
Craig
